


Identikit

by verynotconcise



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Mentions of the Losers Club - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26305567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verynotconcise/pseuds/verynotconcise
Summary: There’s something that he’s looking for. Richie picks up the cutout of a man’s eyes lying on his thigh. The piece is torn out without grace, with its edges fading into white and thinning at the ends. It’s the closest that Richie found to what he’s looking for, but looking at it now--“Richie!”How was it supposed to sound?Richie crushes it in his hand, grinding his teeth together in a mix of frustration and irritation.He’s already forgetting what he is searching for.The 27 years in between, where Richie searches for a person he had long forgotten.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Identikit

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta-ed

The erratic sound of paper flipping fills the otherwise quiet room, lit only by the orange glow of a delicate-looking bedside lamp. It’s the one that’s turned on through the night, even if he isn’t afraid of the dark. He doesn’t turn it off, though, he never does. It feels like he _can’t_ turn it off. He doesn’t know its origins, but it doesn’t feel like it’s something he does for himself. He doesn’t know why, he doesn’t remember when this started.

But that’s nothing new-- he doesn’t remember a lot about his childhood, anyway.

Sitting among scattered magazines and cutouts of brown eyes, Richie’s breathing grows heavy. The pads of his fingertips grow moist in sweat and as he grips onto the next page. The paper wilts under his touch, crumpling and curling into itself.

_Flip, flip, flip._

There’s nothing. There’s so many faces in the magazine, of men and women posing in different outfits with different smiles on their faces, but there’s nothing.

Richie’s lips twist wryly as his heart begins pounding against his ribcage. It’s too late for this, it yells from his chest. It’s not wrong, but not right either. It’s too late, but too late for another reason. Richie doesn’t know how to explain the feeling pressing into his lungs, that he’s a few years too late for this.

_Flipflipflip._

There’s something that he’s looking for. Richie picks up the cutout of a man’s eyes lying on his thigh. The piece is torn out without grace, with its edges fading into white and thinning at the ends. It’s the closest that Richie found to what he’s looking for, but looking at it now--

_“Richie!”_

How was it supposed to sound?

Richie crushes it in his hand, grinding his teeth together in a mix of frustration and irritation.

He’s already forgetting what he is searching for.

There’s a place in his memory that he finds himself transported back to sometimes.

He’s standing at the edge of a cliff that he’s never been to. He doesn’t remember a time when he’s stood in the same place, looking down in the same way as he is now: disinterested and detached.

Beneath him lies a quarry, filled with water that has turned green with years of algae and dust. It’s the epitome peacefulness, with its untouched surface and the sunlight shining onto it. The cliff throws half of it into a large shadow, but for some reason Richie can imagine how it looks like when the sun is directly above it, when the water is fully lit.

He remembers more than just that, though.

Shrill laughter echoes off the walls, loud splashes fill the silence of this memory. Even if there’s no movement in the body of water, there’s so much noise that it’s impossible for Richie to be the only one there.

But he is.

A voice rings throughout the place.

_“Richie!”_

It’s faint, hollow. It’s a poor attempt at replicating something Richie knows like the back of his palm, something he would recognise in a heartbeat, even if he doesn’t know what exactly it is.

Richie’s body steps away from the edge, but it’s wrong. He shouldn’t be walking away. Why is he walking away?

He turns around, and the memory fades into obscurity.

He’s at another one of those small parties that Steve likes to throw. In all honesty, Richie hates attending these gatherings where it’s a bunch of Steve’s close friends, and Richie only really knows Steve.

He pours himself another glass of whiskey. If there’s one good thing about these parties, it’s that Steve never skimps on the good booze.

He’s leaning back against the sofa, watching flames dance across the wooden logs in the fireplace. Snow flutters in the wind outside, white dots that don’t shimmer, unlike their cousins high up in the sky.

The sofa sinks on his left, so Richie turns around. Steve arches a brow, throwing an arm around Richie.

“What’s with the brooding?” Steve says casually, “Didn’t invite you here to brood.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“Yeah, you’re not gonna.” Steve says, “If it’s more alcohol that you need, you know where it is.”

Richie raises his own glass, half-full with the mahogany-coloured drink Richie’s partial to. Steve rolls his eyes.

“Not enough yet?”

“Yet?”

“Yeah, drunk Richie’s always a fucking party.” Steve snorts, sipping his own drink before eyeing Richie thoughtfully, “You should get drunk Richie to write your material.”

“Why?” Richie says, not really interested in knowing why. He sips on his own drink, staring at the fire.

“Look,” Steve says as a preamble, “I’m not saying that your stuff isn’t good or funny. It is. But the things you talk about when you’re drunk? That’s _really_ where the money is.”

“What do I say?”

“Lots of things.” Steve laughs, waving his glass around as he speaks, “I’m just surprised that you’ve never told me any of that shit before, Richie. Why’d you always say that you don’t remember much of your childhood when that’s clearly a lie? Jesus, man. That’s where all your best material comes from.”

Richie frowns. It isn’t a lie: he doesn’t remember much of his childhood. It wasn’t forgetting in the slow way that memory fades with the passage of time. It was forgetting that he’d ever been a child before, forgetting that there was ever a time when he wasn’t already flying back and forth California and New York, making people laugh as a job.

Steve brings his drink to his lips but pauses, thinking about something. “You know, you always say all sorts of weird shit when you’re drunk, but last year was a real treat.”

“What’d I say?”

“ _Really_ weird shit.” Steve snorts, “You were.. kind of hysterical, actually. Talking about a demon clown who ate children, talking about how you and your buds saved the day with the ‘power of friendship’ or something. I don’t know, you were being awfully vague about it. I called bullshit and you got all angry at me, insisting it was real, it happened.. what? Fifteen years ago or something.” Steve takes a slow sip of his drink, “Whatever. It was clearly bullshit, but it was weird how aggressive you got about it. A child eating demon clown? Come on.”

Richie knows he should laugh now, but he can’t. There’s a voice calling his name from deep in his mind, in the darkest corners that he never wants to explore.

_“Richie!”_

He knows it isn’t real. It can’t be real. And yet--

_“Look at me.. look at me!”_

It’s his own voice, floating away, drenched in terror.

His body is frozen in a surprisingly familiar fear, gripping him from head to toe. It’s nothing like he’s ever remembered experiencing before, but intuitively, he knows this fear. It’s like an old fiend coming back to you, an unwanted visitor you’d long moved on from.

A chill creeps down his spine. It’s fear for himself, but it’s also fear for someone else.

It’s the fear of losing someone he’s already lost.

Who was he talking to?

He doesn’t know what he said to Steve a year ago, but whatever it is, it has to be real. He doesn’t want to believe that it could be real, but there’s no other reason for the way his insides twist into dead knots at the mere mention of it.

Yet, for whatever reason, Richie doesn’t know what’s worse: that such a terrifying monster could be real, or the fact that if it is all in his head, it means that that person doesn’t exist as well.

Richie’s waiting in line in the convenience store past midnight. All he wants to do is to buy a pack of cigarettes and be on his way, but the man in front of him is rattling his pocket for change, as if if he tried hard enough, an extra quarter would appear in there. Doesn’t matter that the sum total of what he’s buying is double the cash he’s got on the counter. He’s never going to be able to pay for them.

The woman behind him sighs loudly, rolling her eyes as she crosses her arms. Richie sighs inwardly, tilting his neck the other way.

The cashier waits patiently at the counter, his placid face devoid of any emotion. It’s the same face he’s been wearing since he started a few months ago, trained to be unfazed by spectacular bullshit from people.

Richie sighs, hanging his head. He’s staring at the tip of his boots when something in the corner of his eye catches his attention.

It’s a poster of a boyband he’s never heard of before, but that’s not the main point. It’s the boy at the side, with the combed hair and freckles across his cheeks, smiling at the camera with boyish innocence.

For a split second, it’s not the boy himself that Richie sees, but a flash of bright light and a gummy smile, a face framed by the sunlight behind that doesn’t let Richie see anything else but that smile. A flash of light and a soft voice, empty as it bounces off the walls of Richie’s mind in echoes of echoes.

He’s so close. It’s almost as if Richie could feel himself there physically, close enough to hold on to that person if he only reached out--

_“Richie!”_

Richie’s hand grazes the plastic wrapping around the poster.

He blinks once, stupefied. It had been so real. He was just there, with the boy with the smile and the sun shining in his eyes. All he had to do was to reach out.

Had he dreamt it all up?

Without hesitation, Richie reaches out to grab it. When he looks up, the man in front of him shuffles awkwardly, still fishing deep into his pockets for money he doesn’t have.

Richie reaches around the man, placing the poster on the counter. “I’ll pay for him, too. And a pack of cigarettes.”

The cashier’s bored eyes dart to Richie, raising a brow as he turns, already reaching for Richie’s usual brand of cigarettes. The man next to him backs away in awe, smiling at him gratefully.

“Thank you,” he says with his voice shaking in happiness, in wonder, “Thank you, young man.”

Richie gives the man a half-smile. He doesn’t really care. He’s not as charitable as he seems right now. He just needs to get home immediately.

He doesn’t want to forget-- not again.

He runs the distance between the convenience store and his apartment. Cars drive along leisurely, unperturbed by the empty roads. It’s late enough that there’s only a handful of people walking along the sidewalks, shooting him suspicious glares as he passes them by. 

When he reaches his apartment, the first thing he does isn’t to turn the heater on for his shower. He makes a beeline for his room, turning on the lights before he dives next to his bed, reaching under his bed for a box he’d hidden away in shame.

He doesn’t know why exactly it’s so shameful-- or rather, he doesn’t want to admit to it. There’s probably a multitude of reasons, but they’re not the real reason why he’s so ashamed of it.

Secretly, he knows that he’s ashamed of it for the same reason that finding this person is so important to him. And that’s why he can’t say it, he won’t.

It makes him feel pitiful, it makes him feel weak, pathetic.

He opens the box quickly, brutally, but there’s nothing violent about the way he pulls up the paper hidden under all the loose pieces of cutouts and torn pages of magazines. He pulls it up, holding his breath as his eyes scan the haphazard portrait of a face he’d forgotten years ago.

Slowly, with dexterity that doesn’t belong to Richie Tozier, he pulls away the top of the portrait. His focus is lazer sharp as he makes sure that none of it destroys the other parts of the picture, as he makes sure that every bit of the glued cutout comes off cleanly. 

With precision, Richie begins cutting from the poster. It’s not the best, but Richie doesn’t need perfection. He just needs something good enough to bring something back to him.

To bring someone back to him.

Holding onto the cutout gingerly, Richie lets his hand hover over the portrait, scrutinising the new look with the freshly cut hairdo from the poster.

It’s close-- oh, it’s really close. It just isn’t good enough.

It doesn’t click in the way that it does when something reminds Richie of that person. There’s no rush of sudden realisation, there’s no recognition at the face staring back at him, an amalgamation of parts from different people. Instead of resembling anything that dredges back any memory buried deep in him, it smiles stiffly like the child of Frankenstein's monster.

Richie had forgotten that face, but even he knew that this wasn’t it. This was a poor reconstruction of it. It was a child’s attempt at recreating the Mona Lisa.

He can’t say that he’s surprised, but he is disappointed. It’s the feeling of not being able to put your finger on it, the feeling of something precious being at the edge of your mind, the tip of your tongue. It’s the feeling of it slipping away over and over again, the feeling that rolls over your lungs, the futility that leaks into your veins like venom.

Taking slow, measured breaths, Richie puts the portrait back into the box and slides it under his bed. He takes the poster and the pack of cigarettes to the balcony, sitting on the sill with one leg up and an elbow on his knee.

It’s his favourite time of the day to smoke, because there’s no one who would yell at him for the smoke blowing into their house. With practiced ease, Richie lights the stick between his lips, huffing out a puff that blows back in his face with the light breeze. Then, he unrolls the poster, letting his gaze linger on the boy without his hair.

The boy doesn’t look anything like what Richie thinks he’s looking for. There’s only those freckles that makes Richie wonder now, if the person he’s searching for had any. He doesn’t remember, he doesn’t know. The certainty that possessed him had left, and all Richie is now is a lost man searching for answers.

Looking at this boy now, Richie doesn’t know what compelled him to buy the poster in the first place. Nothing about him reminds Richie of anything.

He’s a stranger, just like that person. And the thought that despite them both being strangers to Richie, that there is still something fundamentally different about them, is laughable. It’s pathetic.

He lights the corner with his lighter, holding onto the poster until it’s mostly burnt before throwing it into the metal can he keeps for nights like this, when disappointment is his only friend.

He’s at the edge of the cliff again.

The sun is higher up in the sky this time. Looking down, Richie thinks of phases of the moon. Where half of the water used to be shrouded in darkness, only a crescent of shadows lay in the water.

He feels it before he hears it. Someone’s calling for him.

_“Richie!”_

It’s still as flat as ever-- emotionless. The strange thing is that Richie thinks he knows what it would sound like if there were emotions in them. What it’s supposed to sound like.

Excited, impatient, happy.

There’s something else that’s different this time, too. There are people-- children-- swimming in the murky water. From this angle, all Richie can see are the top of their heads, arms extending outwards from their bodies submerged underwater. Their movements send ripples across the once peaceful surface, disturbing the quiet that Richie admired in secret.

He’s looking down at them, body tilting dangerously off the edge. What surprises him isn’t the fear of falling over-- it’s the lack thereof. He’s never been here, he’s never jumped off the edge of any cliff, but it feels natural for him to be standing here.

It feels like he’s been here more than he remembers.

He doesn’t know who they are. The sun is shining too brightly and the height is too great for him to see any of their faces clearly. Before he gets the chance to look at them, they’re already turning away, swimming off to the center of the water.

He knows that he should jump. But he can’t. His feet are frozen, and he’s watching them retreat away from him.

He doesn’t know them, but he can’t bear to watch them leave him behind, either. It evokes something in him, something that he hasn’t felt before.

It’s the fear of being forgotten.

_“Richie!”_

It’s softer than before, drifting away from him. They’re leaving him behind, and they’re not coming back.

He leans back, covering his ears, closing his eyes. He doesn’t know this voice, he doesn’t know this place. He doesn’t know why he keeps coming back here, as if it was something important to him.

Why can’t he remember?

He doesn’t know why he feels as if his insides have been scooped out. He doesn’t know why he feels so alone, when he had always been alone for as long as he can remember.

_Why can’t he remember?_

_“Richie!”_ the voice beckons him towards the edge of the cliff. It’s the softest that it’s ever been, but it feels different this time. Even if it’s still the same voice, the same word, the same sound, there’s a note of urgency-- it’s now or never. Richie knows that if the moment passes, it’ll be gone forever.

He peeks an eye open, looking down at the water.

They’re gone.

The water is still, as if there had been nothing there in the first place.

“Richie!” his mother laughs through the video. The video shakes violently for a few seconds as his mother adjusts it on her end. “Honey, aren’t you currently busy preparing for your upcoming tour?”

“Yeah,” Richie shrugs a shoulder, “Wanted to check in on my ma, you know?”

His mother smiles fondly, “Have you been doing well, honey? Sleeping well? Eating well?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie waves a hand nonchalantly, “Sleeping well, eating well.”

She pulls back from the screen, looking over Richie’s face with a small frown. “Perhaps eating _too_ well.”

“Wow.”

“I’m joking with you, honey,” his mother laughs, “It’s always good to see you taking care of yourself. Lord knows how skinny you used to be when we first moved out of Derry. Refused to eat anything. A rebellious beanstalk, you were.”

Richie’s smile wanes. “I refused to eat anything?”

“Yes,” his mother clicks her tongue in disapproval, “You threw a big tantrum over moving out of Derry. Why, your father and I had no idea how much you loved that town. I was so worried when you stopped eating. You were already so skinny..”

Richie doesn’t remember much, but he remembers how he felt about Derry: nothing but unadulterated hatred.

He frowns in confusion, scratching the back of his neck. “Hey, ma?” his mother hums in acknowledgement. “Where did all my stuff go?”

“What stuff?”

“All my old stuff from Derry. I mean-- I don’t remember where I kept them. It’s not with me.”

His mother’s smile slides off her lips, “Richie, you threw them all away.”

This gives Richie pause.

“What?”

“Before you moved out for your radio job in New York,” his mother hesitates, “You had all your old things in a few boxes. I asked if you wanted to keep any of it, or bring them along with you. And..” she purses her lips, “You told me that you’d take care of it. The next morning, I saw them stacked outside with the trash.”

“.. What?” Richie asks incredulously, his heart slowing with dread, “Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I wish I knew.” his mother’s voice drips with sadness, “You didn’t even open the boxes.”

It doesn’t make sense. None of it does.

“I kept some of your old things, though. Old clothes, old paintings from your art classes--”

“Were there any photos?”

His mother frowns in thought, “I kept photos of you--”

“No,” Richie interrupts, “I mean, photos of-- did I have any friends? Back in Derry?”

“Of course you did,” his mother says curtly, offended at the implication that Richie had no friends. “A bunch of good friends.”

“And there’s no photos of them?”

“I don’t remember seeing any in your old stuff. I don’t know why I didn’t take photos of you with your friends.” she sighs regretfully, “You had a best friend back then. Oh, what a sweet thing he was.”

There’s another flash of something-- of sunlight filtering in through the cracks in the wooden ceiling. A strong musty smell of soil, dust and stale air that Richie used to know so well.

“I remember.. there was one summer where you hung out in some place all the time. You said that there was a hammock.”

Of white socks pulled above the ankles, with red stripes at the top. Of a tangle of legs, skinned pressed together in a swaying hammock.

_“Richie!”_

“Do you remember his name?”

His mother hums again, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t remember--” she stops mid sentence, looking surprised. “You don’t remember him either?”

“No,” Richie looks down, “I don’t--” Richie hesitates, “I can’t remember him.”

All at once, all the sounds and the smells and the images disappear, like a film that has reached the end.

There’s a long moment of quiet, silent mourning for something Richie’s only beginning to learn about.

“Oh,” his mother says softly, “That’s such a shame. You were so happy that summer, I still remember how much you smiled back then.” she smiles at Richie through the screen, even if it was more to herself than him. “I could tell, you know.”

Richie furrows his brows. “Tell.. what?”

Her voice dips gently, patiently. She’s letting him in on a secret she’s never told anyone before. “Of the group of friends you had, you were most fond of him.” 

Richie nods. _I know_ , he thinks, _I think I still am._

It’s a second later that she adds in an even quieter voice, “And as far as I could tell, he was fondest of you, too.”

There are days when the glare of the sun is at the forefront of his mind.

He doesn’t know why he thinks of the sun, accompanied by flashes of random images. He’s riding a bicycle through the streets, laughing gleefully with his head tilted upwards to the blue skies with white clouds drifting mindlessly across. It’s a chorus of laughter, the innocence of a childhood he doesn’t remember having.

Sometimes, he looks at the smooth skin of his palm. He traces a line down with a finger, where something in him hurts viscerally. There’s no scar, no mark of anything having been there before. But sometimes, he sees flashes of his blood oozing out from his palms, cut open by the sharp edge of a broken coke glass.

Sometimes, he remembers holding onto someone’s face, imploring him to look at Richie. He doesn’t remember why they were in a dilapidated room, why he desperately needed that person to look at him. He doesn’t remember who else was there, _what_ else was there, but he remembers the overwhelming fear of losing that person suffocating him.

He remembers flashes of his hands on that person’s broken arm, setting it back with a sickening crunch followed with a sharp inhale of breath. He remembers the way his heart paused for a split second, worrying that he’d fucked it up and broken it further.

He remembers the snippets. Bits and pieces of the big picture.

Somehow, it’s always drowned out by the sun, the glare of the sun in places where it shouldn’t be, reaching into the recesses of his mind for a quick peek before it’s fading back into the shadows of his enigmatic childhood.

He sets the Belvedere on the table, next to the bottle of Bacardi and a bowl of ice. Stoically, he picks up a piece of square ice, dropping it into the glass in front of him before he opens the Bacardi, pouring it into the glass. The caramel-coloured liquid fills up the glass.

His only aim tonight is to get drunk.

He should probably do this with someone to look out for him. But Richie doesn’t have any friends he can count on, and Steve is his manager more than a friend.

He can’t remember ever having friends, but apparently he had some many years ago. Good ones, too. It makes him feel even lonelier now, more alone than ever.

The first glass goes down easily, and so does the second, and the third. It’s around the fifth glass that the burn in his throat starts becoming noticeable, that he starts regretting his decision.

He pours another glass out anyway.

He doesn’t remember anything else that night, how much more he drank before he blacked out. He wakes up on the floor of his bedroom, with the box halfway out from under the bed, toppled sideways spilling paper all over the room. Rolling his head over, he finds himself holding onto the portrait. Its middle is wrinkled inwards in the way that damp paper dries up. It’s not evenly wrinkled. It’s splotchy and ruins the portrait up close.

He had been crying.

Why was he crying?

Richie puts it back into the box, gathering loose pieces of paper before throwing them back inside. He doesn’t know what it is about his past, he doesn’t know who that person is-- but he knows that whatever it is, it made him unbearably sad to have remembered.

“Why do you feel that it’s important to remember this person?”

Richie exhales lazily, staring at the row of framed certificates on the wall. “I don’t know,” he says, “It feels like-- like he’s integral to remembering my past. It’s like, everything that I remember somehow goes back to this person, and I don’t know why. It feels like he’s the key to unlocking my memories.”

“Why was he important to you?”

“I don’t know.” Richie says frustratedly, “I just _know_ he is.”

“Do you feel that a possible reason why you feel this way, is because there are things that you’d like to tell him?”

“Like what?”

His therapist leans back against her seat, tapping her pen against the notebook in her lap. “The only person who knows the answer to that--”

“Is me. Yeah, I know.” Richie says, glancing at her before looking out of the window. “I don’t know. How would I have anything to say to someone I don’t remember?”

She doesn’t offer a reply to his question, but a cryptic smile. “Have you tried writing your feelings down?”

Richie frowns, looking back at her skeptically. “What? Like a diary?”

She laughs softly, “Yes, if that’s what you’re comfortable with.”

“I don’t write diaries,” Richie says, “ _Dear diary, would you believe the fucking shit that happened to me today?_ It feels stupid, why would I write to some inanimate object?”

“Well, you don’t _have_ to write in your diary. You could keep a diary to write to this person you think about.”

“Why? What’s the point? That person’s never gonna read it anyway.”

“Yes,” she says gently, “But you will.” Richie scoffs, but her soft smile doesn’t waver. “I’ve recommended this to a few others, and it seems like it’s always been helpful to them in some way.”

She looks out of the window, staring at the windows of the glass building across the street. It’s bland and dull and unremarkable, like other buildings in this part of town. Without any character.

It’s weird. Even if Richie doesn’t remember much about this person, he remembers that this person’s character was one of a kind.

What is that?

“Yeah?” Richie laughs humourlessly, “Why’s that, doc?”

She drags her eyes away from the window. There’s something different about the way she’s smiling, even if it’s the same smile that Richie saw seconds ago.

It’s poisoned with wistfulness.

“I think that maybe, sometimes, we write the words we need to hear most. That’s why writing helps-- it helps us to process our emotions better.”

It’s the only reason why Richie is sitting at his desk, holding onto a pen with a lined paper in front of him.

He puts the ball of the pen on the top line,

_Dear you,_

His pen freezes on the next line, not for a lack of things to write, but because he’s overwhelmed by it. Words explode in his thoughts, all of them demanding to be written into real words, by pen and ink that will breathe life into them.

_Who are you? Where are you? What’s your name? What happened to you? Why do I keep hearing you call my name? Do you remember me? Do you think about me? Do you get these random flashes of memories from a time you don’t remember living through? Do you wonder who your friends were? Was I important to you?_

_Why are you important to me?_

He doesn’t write any of it down. Instead, he stands up and ambles over to the mini bar at his kitchen, pouring a half-finished bottle of Johnnie Walker’s into a glass with a large piece of ice. With his drink in one hand, he returns to his room to pick up the paper, along with a cigarette and a lighter, before he’s shuffling into the balcony.

It’s earlier than the usual time he does this, but it doesn’t matter. The weather is so cold that no one stays out longer than they have to anymore.

He sips on his drink before lighting up the stick, blowing it out in a thin line that disappears in the strong winds quickly. His hair is flying, and his loose shirt flutters in the wild wind. The cold bites his face, but he doesn’t flinch. He sits down on the sill, as he always does, and takes his time to admire the view of the city, of lights that never dim throughout the night.

When he’s halfway through his cigarette, Richie turns around, dragging the metal can towards him with his feet. He holds the paper over the can as he flicks the lighter on, letting the dancing flame catch onto the paper and burn for a few good seconds before he lets go of it. It falls into the can, curling into itself as the flame spreads across, turning black where it touches like a plague.

Richie turns away, taking a long drag as he watches heavy clouds drag themselves across the dark sky. His thoughts are a lot like that, Richie thinks, the clouds. Heavy and slow to go away.

_“Why was he important to you?”_

_Why are you important to me?_

“Why are you important to me?” Richie asks, although it isn’t as much a question as it is a statement. He thinks he knows why.

Deep down, he’s always known why.

He exhales slowly, letting the smoke dabble around before it dies away. When he’s done with his drink, he stubs out the cigarette against the metal can.

The paper stops burning before it reaches _Dear you._

He doesn’t think of it for a long time.

Life goes on, as it always does. Quickly, it fades away again. Quickly, Richie forgets why it was ever so important for him to uncover his past.

He forgets about that person for a long time.

Richie is waiting for his cup of coffee before his meeting with Steve.

One of the only perks about his job is the irregular working hours, which means that he gets to sleep in too. It’s just after lunch, and he’s running late for his meeting. But this isn’t the first time that Richie’s late for any meeting, and Steve already knew that Richie was running late even before he sent a text message.

He’s leaning against the wall, chewing on his fingernails as he stares into space. He bites onto the hardened skin under his nail, the parts that he inevitably ends up chewing on when he gets lost in his thoughts. He pulls away his finger, running his thumb over the jagged edges of his nails. 

“Richie?”

He’s so dazed that when the barista calls his name, he startles, hitting his elbow against the wall behind him.

“Double shot latte for Richie?”

“Uh,” Richie walks forward stiffly, clearing his throat intentionally, “That’s me.”

He’s about to reach for the cup when his gaze meets the barista’s. In that instant, a sudden flash of an old memory strikes him harder than he’d ever been struck by drunken strangers or angry schoolmates.

In the split second that he looks into the barista’s brown eyes, his mind interposes another set of eyes between them-- a set that comes so clearly that Richie’s hand twitches when the barista lets go of the cup. It slips between his fingers, falling onto the edge of its bottom, tilting dangerously sideways.

It comes back to him in faded, still motion pictures that fail to focus on the object. It comes back to him in curled eyelashes, in hooded eyes peeking over, stealing glances like a dirty secret.

It comes back to him in a muffled shout, in a voice that he’d almost forgotten all over again. A small body turns in the white light, an arm in a cast covered in sludge, a widening smile stretching across his dirt-smudged face--

_“Richie!”_

The barista’s face falls as he leans forward to catch the cup, but Richie remains frozen in place, staring into space.

“Woah,” the barista chuckles anxiously, glancing at Richie sheepishly, “My bad.”

Richie blinks. He looks down, meeting the barista’s eyes again, hoping to see that same set of eyes that sent a chill down his spine.

It’s gone.

The barista’s eyes are smaller than the ones he remembers. It’s brown, but it’s much lighter than the ones he saw, the one he’s trying desperately to hold on to. It’s polite and kind and gentle-- there’s no fire in them, no love in those eyes.

Richie offers a weak smile, “Nah,” he says. He’s starting to wonder what it was that distracted him in the first place. “It’s my bad.”

He forgets those eyes the moment he steps out of the shop.

He’s standing at the edge of the cliff.

This time, the sun is shining directly above them. There is no shadow on the water. It’s a green imperfect circle surrounded by a group of trees and rocks, creating a barrier between this place and the outside.

Laughter echoes off the enclosed space, the sound of water splashing around floats in the air. It’s all the same hollow, distorted noises that Richie’s heard before in previous dreams. He peers down, and from where he’s standing, the heads of the six children float like beach balls on the surface of a green ocean.

Slowly, they begin swimming away, back to the centre of the circle as they did before. But there’s a boy with dark brown hair, matted to his face, staring up at Richie. He doesn’t follow the rest of them, choosing to stay behind and meet Richie’s stare. The glare of the sun makes it difficult to see his features clearly, but a voice cuts through the dream-like quality of this place.

Richie stares back at the faceless boy, waiting for something to happen. He feels it before he hears it, a whistling sound from a faraway land.

_“Richie!”_

As Richie stands still at the top of the cliff, the whistling grows louder and louder, more intense with every echo.

_“Richie!”_

And when it finally booms, claps like thunder, the curtain lifts. It’s as if he could see himself standing here twenty-four years ago, waiting for his turn to jump. It’s as if he could see the way that his friends called for him, waiting to see the way he’d do a belly flip. It’s as if he could hear that one person yell over everyone else, calling for him, reaching out for him through the distance and the time and the fog over their childhood.

_“Richie!”_

Suddenly, Richie remembers. It hits with the force of a thousand exploding stars. He steps over the edge of the cliff calmly, serenely.

There’s no fear in his falling, because he remembers now. He remembers why this is so familiar now, he remembers everything.

_“Richie!”_

This isn’t falling. This is remembering.

He catches a glimpse of that person’s face before he falls into the water with a big splash. A clear image frozen in time, of thick eyebrows and a strong nose, of freckles across tanned skin and a brilliant smile that splits his face in two.

Of brown, doe eyes that sparkle with happiness when he falls into the water.

How did he ever forget?

Richie wakes up with a forceful gasp, eyes flying open, frenzied. Quickly, he rolls out of bed, falling onto the floor and reaching for his box.

He turns the box over hurriedly, watching all the paper cuttings flitter in the air on their way down. In the dull orange light provided by his bedside lamp, Richie begins his search again, flipping through cutouts and pages of magazines hastily.

_Flip, flip, flip._

But despite his best attempts to remember it--

_“Richie!”_

It’s considerably muted, distant. There isn’t the same energy in it anymore. It drains out of the voice like a deflating balloon that Richie can’t see, can’t plug the gap.

It’s already slipping from him again, and he’s helpless to hold on to it.

His eyes scan every face in the magazine, cutting out the pieces that he thinks look most similar to the face that he can remember. There’s an urgency to his actions, unparalleled to anything before. Richie knows, with every fibre of his being, that this is the last time. There’s no second chances after this.

This is the last time.

_Flipflipflip._

His heart is pounding, the pads of his fingers are moist with sweat, and there’s a thrumming headache blooming at the back of his eyelids. Still, he persists with his careful movements, removing and replacing pieces and parts of the portrait that no longer fit.

When he’s finally done, he lifts it up, examining the new portrait.

He’d already forgotten almost everything he just remembered. But he remembers one thing, and something he knows beyond a doubt is true.

As he stares at the portrait, studying the face reconstructed from memory, he realises that the nose is too wide, the brows are thinner than it should be, the lips are plumper than they should be.

And those eyes--

_“Richie!”_

It’s so soft that Richie almost misses it. It’s flat and unfeeling, and Richie can’t remember what used to be there anymore.

He doesn’t remember how it really sounded anymore.

His eyes begin prickling with tears. Richie’s vision blurs as he continues staring at the portrait. Those eyes-- even if he had found a perfect replacement for them, it wouldn’t be the same. None of it could ever be the same.

He pulls the portrait close to his face, closing his eyes with difficulty as a tear leaks out, languidly rolling down his face.

The picture is a pale imitation of that person. It’ll never bring him back to Richie. Because now Richie knows, without a doubt--

_Dear you,_

Richie crumples into himself, holding the portrait to his chest as he begins crying.

“Who are you?” Richie sobs, crushing the portrait under his body. Richie folds further into himself, letting his head fall onto the mess of paper and magazines and posters all around him. In the warm glow of his orange lamp, Richie feels colder than he’s ever felt before.

He’s never been afraid of the dark before, but he thinks that someone else was, once upon a time.

Who?

_“Why was he important to you?”_

He’s never truly been afraid of dying. He’s never felt any fear for himself. He’s only felt one very specific type of fear before, and all of it leads back to the same thing, to the same person that’s haunted him for twenty-four years.

But he’s already forgetting. He’s crying and he’s crying but for reasons he does not remember. All he knows is the feeling of failure crashing over him, the feeling that something important slipped away again, and all of it to do with the person in the portrait he was clinging onto.

_Because I loved you before, and I’ve had to lose you over and over again._

“Who are you?”

Sunlight streams in through his opened curtains, shining directly on his face.

He pushes himself up amongst a pile of papers and magazines crunching under his body. His body is sore and his eyes are puffy. Had he been crying last night?

Why was he crying?

He’s about to touch his eyes when he finds a paper in his hands. It’s crushed and crumpled, but it’s obvious that he had been holding onto it all night. Curious, he unrolls the paper to find a face, put together delicately in spite of how rough and torn the edges of each part is. It’s a jigsaw of mismatched pieces, forced together crudely in a poor attempt of reconstructing a whole picture that doesn’t make sense.

Richie frowns.

“What is this?”

**Identikit:**

—used for a method of creating a picture (as of the face of a person wanted by police) by combining several separate images (as of different features)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been pretty sad recently and I've been struggling to write, so I decided to write something short and sad today. I went back to read the fic I was writing before I set it aside to write Daydreaming, and I really liked the style. It was something different, and something I wanted to explore.
> 
> The title comes from my recent obsession with Radiohead's most recent album, _A Moon Shaped Pool_. Ironically, I was listening to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDqKz3MAE2Y) while writing this fic. It's beautifully surreal and made me feel like I was floating, wandering around aimlessly. I suppose that's not too far off from how I feel now of days.


End file.
